"What do you mean 'grunting muse'? I don't even like Muse." Andy Carroll queries The Mill as Newcastle and Liverpool close in. Photograph: Steve Bardens/Getty Images

You wait your whole life to meet The One. Then you realise he's only on loan; that The One will be Doing One in the summer. That's the way of things for Sam Allardyce, whose grunting muse Andy Carroll is likely to head back to Liverpool or Newcastle at the end of the season. Allardyce, according to Wednesday's rags, will console himself by paying £12m for the prolific Vitesse Arnhem forward Wilfried Bony, and in doing so increase the top flight's Wilf quotient to its highest level since the 1950s.

Real Madrid want Edinson Cavani. If they get him, Manchester City will offer £38m for Karim Benzema faster than you can say: "Financial Fair Play? Arf! Let's see how that goes down in a court of law."

David Moyes wants to lure former Everton centre-back Joleon Lescott into a deceptively sensual embrace by signing him from Manchester City.

Asmir Begovic, one of the world's foremost talents in the ancient art of reading between lines, reckons the signing of Jack Butland means he may just be doing one from Stoke in the summer. Dame Fortune has bought him a one-way ticket to Manchester.

Robert Lewandowski will join Bayern Munich in the summer; Borussia Dortmund's misery at losing their star striker will be compounded by the inclusion of Mario Gomez in a part-exchange deal.

Diego Simeone and Arsène Wenger will stage a televised sumo wrestle to decide whether David Villa plays for Atlético Madrid or Arsenal next season.

Wolves will go back to Blackpool for Alex Baptiste in the summer, having had a January bid rejected. You couldn't possibly care less, could you?